“The highest spirituality indeed moves in a free and wide air far above that lower stage of seeking which is governed by religious form and dogma; it does not easily bear their limitations and, even when it admits, it transcends them; it lives in an experience which to the formal religious mind is unintelligible. But man does not arrive immediately at that highest inner elevation and, if it were demanded from him at once, he would never arrive there. At first he needs lower supports and stages of ascent; he asks for some scaffolding of dogma, worship, image, sign, form, symbol, some indulgence and permission of mixed half-natural motive on which he can stand while he builds up in him the temple of the spirit. Only when the temple is completed, can the supports be removed, the scaffolding disappear.”

“They say, O my God, that I am mad because I see no fault in Thee; but if I am indeed mad with Thy love, I do not wish to recover my sanity.”

We all yearn for happiness that will last. What lasts? What is eternal? What do we connect with that will connect us to eternity?

Many people will think of God, or the Supreme Source. This is of course our primary connection, the one that we all share, whatever kind of conception we have. But there is another eternal connection we, as souls ourselves, can make.

The connection to other eternal spirit-souls. The spark of kinship we often find here is personal, unique, and transformative. This is the touch of the eternal, which we find not only in the Supreme but in the light of each individual soul that we meet, a minute spark expanding through every cell of that soul’s body, composed of a thousand combinations of elements, experience, and individual consciousness.

The eternal or transcendental realm is described in the Vedic scriptures as being full of knowledge, full of bliss, and eternal. The soul, the child of this realm, is always looking for the bliss of its own nature. We recognize something of it in one another–though often covered–and we seek it through various experiences. Through these experiences we can often come to understand that we are not just a body, not just a set of driven mundane activities. We are more than that, and that is why we seek more than that. We seek to recover our connection to the transcendental realm, where the unlimited expansion of relationship and divine love can finally satisfy the questing soul.